Escape to West Berlin, August 1961 - a picture from the past

On 15 August 1961, two days after tearing up streets and installing barbed wire fencing to prevent the free movement between East and West Berlin, the East German authorities begin building a wall to permanently seal the border and prevent access to the West. An average of 2,000 East Germans had been crossing into the West every day. East German labourers built the first concrete segments of the Berlin Wall whilst troops oversaw them with machine guns.

Berlin, Germany, August 1961: An elderly woman tries to escape through her window to reach the street underneath, which is part of West Berlin. Some men try to pull her back into the house. The house was located right at the sector border in the eastern part of Berlin
DPA/Corbis